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In an effort to have just a little more control over what I write, on which of the many PCs I use I write it, and where I post it (i.e. to one or more of the blogs and other sites to which I’m spreading the news), I started to use Google Docs again.

The problem being that I can hardly keep track of anything that I didn’t write and post instantly. I’ve got three notebooks, each a different size (one “moleskin” type book, though no skins were harmed in its making; one composition book; one steno notepad), and a number of computers ($15 Laptop, $0 Laptop, converted Maxspeed Maxterm thin client, Dell Optiplex GX520, iBook G4), have of which change Linux distros as often as most people change underwear (that’s daily, for those of you not following), with /home partitions constantly moving, being deleted and otherwise being ignored.

So the theory is that by centralizing everything on Google Docs, I can better keep track of what is where, what is going where and what went where. That’s the theory anyway.

And while I’m on the subject, it’s time for me to make complete backups of all my blogs, especially Click, which has the most posts and is on a server that is nowhere near as reliable as those of Google or WordPress. The great thing about WordPress, as far as backups go, is the ability to export the entire blog as XML. For Google, and probably for Movable Type, I’ll just have to save monthly archives going all the way back

But I haven’t been the most prolific blogger of late. It all began when the esteemed, highly qualified individuals who run the insidesocal.com blogs (including Click) decided that the best way to stop DNS-level spam attacks was to put an IP block on the entire European continent, costing me every link I could hope to get for Linux-related material (yep, Linux and FOSS is huge in Europe; where else would they even think of publishing “Debian Fur Dummies”?).

So I stopped pimping Click and started this blog, also throwing items to the great LXer. Losing Distrowatch as a source of links to reviews of Linux and BSD distros was probably the biggest blow. So I’ve pretty much been not caring about traffic on Click, which hovers at a steady 150-250 a day.

I’ve had trouble with Slackware 12 and the $0 Laptop (Gateway Solo 1450). Something happens when services load that prevent it from running. I’ll have to take a much closer look, but I’m ready to try Slackware 11 just to see if that makes a difference.

I see in the Slackware security page that patches are still being doing for version 11, and even 10.2 for Firefox issues, and back to 8.1 for things like CUPS.

But Slackware 11 is pretty well covered, and I recall having a better time with Zenwalk back in the 4.2 days when I was first getting into Linux.

Even so, Debian is running pretty well on the $0 Laptop. I don’t have Xfce installed, so I don’t know how much better it will do than GNOME. And in Ubuntu 7.10, I can actually make the touchpad do what I want, which is to run at the right speed and NOT tap-to-click unless I want.

And I have been running Puppy 3.00 from live CD (compatible with Slackware 12 packages), and now that I’ve managed to control the noisy fan with a few modeprobes set to run at startup and a cron job, I just might stick with it for … everything. It’s so fast. No tap-to-click in Puppy, but since I don’t want it, that’s fine.
I installed the SFS file for OpenOffice on one of my other Puppy setups, but not this one. I’ll have to try it. I actually like the way Damn Small Linux adds things like the GIMP and AbiWord — the filesystem in DSL (and, by extension Knoppix, which I’ve also been running on the $0 Laptop) seems more flexible than Puppy’s. I don’t think you have any size limitations. I think Puppy’s pup_save can only be 1.5 GB, but that still doesn’t stop you from mounting other filesystems and working with them, so it’s a six-of-one situation anyway.

And Damn Small Linux runs like crap on the $0 Laptop. I just can’t get the X configuration right, no matter how many different ways I try it. Puppy, of course, is perfect.